Earth Angels (23 page)

"You get off in a few minutes, right?" he said.

"Yes."

"Catalina Island."

"What about it?"

"We're going to have dinner there."

"You're crazy."

"I'm driving you home to change, and we're heading to San Pedro to catch a boat."

"We'll never get on without reservations."

"Then we can take a helicopter."

"I really can't. I have too many things to do."

He took her by the arm and led her to the nurses' station.

After she had grabbed her purse and signed out, he drove her to her apartment, where, still protesting, she changed into a dinner dress. They were at the Catalina Island cruise boat dock in San Pedro within an hour, but Gloria had been right, the boat was full, so they were forced to take an expensive helicopter flight from the nearby Ports of Call village departure pad. Stepanovich was thankful they accepted credit cards.

Twelve minutes after taking off, they arrived at Catalina's Avalon Bay. It was dusk and as they descended, the island seemed to glow with its own peculiar richness: white cliff side homes looking down at a harbor faced by a street of ship shape hotels and artificially weathered storefronts. At the end of town a curving esplanade led to the Greek columned Catalina Casino and Ballroom, an impressive domed landmark from the thirties.

Climbing off the airship onto a long wooden pier, the youthful chopper pilot told them the last flight from the island was at eleven thirty.

They walked along the pier to a narrow thoroughfare running between the beach and a line of hotels and shops facing the ocean. Meandering slowly along the strand, feeling the salt air and gently lapping waves and Gloria's arm in his, Stepanovich felt tension starting to leave him.

"I had forgotten how peaceful it is over here," she said.

"Thanks for coming with me. I had to get away."

"Getting away is part of it. But talking about your problems is what really helps."

They passed a candy shop with a taffy pulling machine working endlessly in the window, a souvenir shop, a door-less bar filled with tanned young beer drinkers wearing shorts and T shirts.

"It's not like you're the most forthcoming person in the world either," he said.

"Maybe I'm not," she said, without looking him in the eye. "But I guess we can't help the way we are."

He shrugged.

"Or can we?" she asked.

"What are you getting at?"

"Is it actually possible for you and me to change to give up everything and live differently?"

"I'm not sure," he said.

"It all depends on what's important to you. Look at the people who live here. They gave up everything to live a peaceful life on an island."

"I could do that."

"I don't think so. I don't think you could ever leave your job."

They had dinner in a small Italian restaurant and were lucky to be seated before a window that offered them a view of the entire harbor. As they sipped Chianti, two sailboats beat the settling darkness, racing from beyond the rocks at the edge of the harbor and mooring in choppy water near the casino ballroom.

A spindly middle-aged waiter wearing an apron and a bow tie, who said he'd come to the island three years ago for a weekend and had never returned, served them solicitously all evening and soon they were stuffed.

"I'm sorry," Stepanovich said.

"About what?"

"I'm sorry for pulling you away from everything at such short notice."

"It's not that."

"Then should I ask?"

She leaned close and kissed him. "I don't want anything to come between us," she said, then put her head on his shoulder.

After dinner, they walked arm in arm along the boardwalk near the casino ballroom. A balmy ocean breeze wafted from the leeward side of the island and the bay itself, filled with swaying pleasure craft hiding from the blackness farther out to sea, glimmered metallic gray.

"It's after eleven," Stepanovich said, checking his wristwatch as they passed under a boardwalk street lamp. "We'd better get back to the helicopter."

"It seems like we just got here. What a wonderful evening."

He stopped and took her in his arms. "It doesn't have to end. We can stay here."

"But I have to be at work at ten tomorrow."

He kissed her neck. "We can take the eight o'clock boat. "

"We'll never get a room this late."

"It's Monday. We'll find one." He did not want to start looking just yet, though. Not taking his eyes from hers, he said, "I love you."

"I love you too."

They spent the night at the Sea Crest Lodge, a small hotel a block from the beach. The next morning they woke late because they had made love most of the night and missed the early boat. They had to take the helicopter again.

It was almost ten by the time they made it to the county hospital. Stepanovich parked in Gloria's spot in the employee parking area and walked in with her because he needed to use the telephone.

Having phoned Black and Arredondo from the nurses' station in Gloria's ward, a thought occurred to him. "I'd like to look at the medical records on Primitivo Estrada," he said after she came out of the nurses' lounge wearing her uniform. "The one who was shot at the church."

"I can get fired for giving out medical records," she whispered.

"I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important."

Her eyes focused on the filing cabinet in the corner. "Someone could walk in here any minute."

"Fordyce is dead. I need this."

"Go ahead, I guess," Gloria said mournfully.

A tall nurse with stringy blond hair stepped into the nurses' station. "Gloria, we need you in 301."

Stepanovich waited for Gloria to leave the room with the other woman and listened to the retreating footsteps down the hallway. He stepped from behind the counter and looked both ways. The hallway was empty. He advanced to the file cabinet and began pulling open drawers. The third drawer was filled with thick manila folders indexed with plastic tags with names and file numbers. One of the tags was marked: "ESTRADA, PRIMITIVO." He opened the file, flipping through pages of scribbled doctors reports until he found the patient information sheet. Estrada's home address was listed in the upper left hand corner: 442 E. Ortega Street.

Stepanovich grabbed a ballpoint pen from the desk and copied the address onto a note tablet. He tore off the sheet of paper and shoved it in his pocket, then closed the file and replaced it exactly where he'd found it in the drawer.

In the hospital parking lot, he climbed into his sedan and drove directly to Ortega Street. Cruising at a moderate speed so as not to draw attention in the gang neighborhood, he eyed the bungalow where Payaso lived. Like the other rundown homes on the block, the tiny one story structure was situated on a narrow lot with a patch of lawn in front. Like a seedy dollhouse, a couple of steps led to a tiny front porch supported by two wooden columns. Sitting in a chair on the front porch was a dumpy, heavily made-up Mexican woman whose hair hung to her waist. Stepanovich estimated her age at forty.

Rather than make another pass down the street and risk drawing the woman’s attention, he made a left turn at the end of the block and drove away.

A few minutes later, Stepanovich steered into the well-lit Hollenbeck Station parking lot and pulled up beside Arredondo and Black, who, puffy-eyed from lack of sleep, were leaning against the side of a patrol car sipping coffee from vending machine cups.

"Payaso lives at 442 East Ortega Street," he said climbing out of the sedan.

Arredondo blew steam from his cup. "Right in the heart of White Fence territory."

"I made a pass by. There was a woman sitting on the porch."

"If we arrest him there, the whole neighborhood will know he's down," Black said, slurping the hot brew loudly.

"There's no case unless we get him to confess and give us the names of the shooters," Stepanovich said.

"Payaso's not a talker," Black said. "He's solid. He'll just sit there and hold his shit."

"Then I'll beat it out of him," Arredondo said.

"He'll take the beating, but he still won't hand up his homeboys. A dumb son of a bitch, but tough. He's a man."

Exasperated. Arredondo let out his breath angrily. He turned to Black. "You sound like a friend of his."

Black's mouth formed a sour smile. "I don't have any Mexican friends,
compadre
. "

As they stood there glaring at each other, Stepanovich stepped between them.

"Look," he said, "I know we're all tired, but there's just the three of us carrying the weight. Let's forget the bullshit until we find out who killed Fordyce."

The two stopped glaring. Stepanovich went to the sedan and reached in the open clipboard and pencil lying on the front seat. Then he began to sketch a rough diagram of the four hundred block of Ortega Street.

****

SEVENTEEN

The lights in Smokey Salazar's crowded apartment were low and a cassette player resting on a card table in the bare living room was playing Puppet's favorite tune: "Earth Angel." Payaso could tell that the party might last through the night because though it had been going for only an hour or so, the homeboys had already gone through a case of Budweiser.

Though they all knew what happened because they'd all been in the car, he, Loco, Gordo, and Lyncho were huddled in a corner, listening to Smokey's version of what had happened. Retelling the details from the respective points of view of the shooters was a ritual Payaso was used to. There was always such repetitive conversation at a party after a "ride." Finally Smokey completed his account.

With this break in the conversation, Payaso, who'd been the driver during the ride, took a final acrid, tongue-burning drag from the joint he'd been smoking. He sucked in enough confidence to begin his version. "I was doing some heavy wheeling," he said, feeling secure in the homey atmosphere. "And when we got hit, the first thing I was thinking was 'I hope they didn't hit the gas tank,'" he said, though in reality he had been too frightened to be cognizant of such details when it was happening.

"We're gonna call you Speedy Gonzales," Gordo said, slapping him on the back, and the others laughed.

"Speedy Gonzales," Lyncho echoed. "Payaso is the Speedy Gonzales of White Fence."

Payaso smiled and shrugged. With the help of the marijuana, he easily imagined the Saturday morning cartoon character Speedy Gonzales: a long nosed mouse wearing a sombrero and a serape. Good 'ol Speedy was only a mouse, but he was loved without qualification by both adults and children. Speedy was accepted by all for what he was. Payaso had never missed the Speedy show as a child. In fact, though hesitant to admit it even to his homeboys, he still watched the show regularly.

Holding the diminished roach with his fingertips, Payaso took a final puff and held the burning smoke in his lungs. He grabbed a cold can of beer from the case on the coffee table and popped a top. Throwing his head back, he gulped from the can until it was empty. As the effects of the roach and the chaser consumed him, he ascended to a state of utter relaxation.

As Lyncho began to tell the story of the shooting from his point of view, Payaso came to his feet and shuffled to the cassette player. The door to the tiny kitchen was open and the homegirls, Sleepy, Flaca, Sad Eyes, and Smokey's bride, Parrot, were sitting around a Formica top table preparing tamales, laughing, and chatting in English and Spanish. All of them, even Parrot, were wearing tight fitting blouses and pants.

Though Payaso knew Smokey would kill him if he ever said so, Parrot, with her skinny bird legs and bloated torso, looked like a pony keg on stilts. As usual, she was talking about what women always talked about in fact, the only thing they ever seemed to talk about men.

"Except for the days he was in the hospital, Smokey hasn't left me alone since the day we got married," Parrot said. "I tell him, hey gimme a break, cabron. I'm sore down there. But that don't mean nothing to him. When he wants it he wants it. I mean like right there on the floor in front of the television. I got rug bums." The women laughed.

Perhaps, Payaso decided, all women were capable of talking about was men. But it was different because they avoided talking about men graphically as men talked about women. Instead of saying "fuck," they always said "we were doing it" or "he was down there" or he wanted "some."

"He always wants it," Parrot said reproachfully.

Payaso turned to the window. Below, the well-lit courtyard of the housing project was deserted because everyone suspected the cops would be on the warpath after the shooting. Feeling momentarily overpowered by the combined effects of smoke and booze, he grasped the windowsill with both hands to steady himself. Across the courtyard, past some littered clotheslines, a primitive mural covered the side of the apartment building: a smiling, purple robed Madonna riding in a customized Chevy convertible. Come to think of it, the Chevy, right down to the moon hubcaps and pinstriping, looked like the one he owned.